ACI 1 «Основные учения буддизма», занятие 4

Course I, Class 4: What is an Authentic Student and Authentic Dharma
Transcribed by: Louise Rosenthal
7/19/93

[students: [unclear] ]

[unclear] okay. You have homework?

[students: Yes. Yes.]

[student, Kylie: We get extra credit for the kalpa part that a?]

I apologize for the kalpa part okay? I wanted...it's just that the class ran on after
nine last week and I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna make you...stay too late.

[student: I thought it was like a trick to make us ]

Yeah yeah.

[student: Go to the library [unclear] so ]

Basically, I mean I wanted to use the computer and teach you it from the [b:
Abhidharmakosha] which is where kalpas are explained, there's like six different
kinds of kalpas. But basically it's almost immeasurable. I've seen somebody put
a, an estimate out on this couple...what was it four hundred billion or something?

[students: Four hundred twenty million.]

Yeah but different people have different estimates, but what it is is just that...it's
the time almost between...it's the time in which it takes a universe to, to be
created and, and be destroyed. I mean it's that long. It's the time it takes a sun to
be born and then to die out. At roughly, I mean it's, it's much more complicated
than that, and I wanted to do the whole thing with you but it didn't seem
like...you guys can get pretty burned out at the, at nine-thirty last night.

[student, Vilma Staiano: How does anybody know this?]
Buddha is omniscient.

[student, Kylie: Is a, is a buddha's kalpa the same as a hindu kalpa?]

I don't know. But I'll tell y...I'll tell you something, in that same chapter of the [b:
Abhidharmakosha] which is the end of the third chapter, he explains...he explains
things which, which could...he could not have known. He explains subatomic
particles. He goes down into like eight levels of sub-atomic particles. And he
goes into light-years. I mean he explains light-years. He explains the, the life of a
star, the sun, you know things like that, I mean this is in...this is [b: Vasabandhi],
this is three hundred A-D, four hundred A-D...you know quoting the Buddha.
So it's incredible, in fact they run out of words for the sub-atomic particles below
the diameter of a flea's egg...aah, and they start giving them silly names like
quark and, you know, it's funny, you know, and they start calling them she-
particle, horse-particle...they know and they say this particle is one trillionth of
this particle...they go from those particles up to, up to light-years. Up to ten to
the sixtieth power they have a different name for each number...in the [b:
Abhidharma], it's incredible, so yeah, it looks like the work of an omniscient
being. Okay?

[student: When are we gonna read that one?]

[student: [unclear] ]

It's about fourth year...second half of the fourth year.

[student: [unclear] unit of time that they talk about when they say at the end of
this, the then ]

Kalpa.

[student: Kalpa then things will start to disintegrate and ]

That's called a {jigpay} kalpa. That's at the end of sixty or eighty kalpas you have
a little kalpa where the world dissolves. The universe [unclear]. [laughs]

[student: Isn't that a little like five hundred years or something?]

No no not that easy.
[student: They give a number on the [unclear] ]

Yeah. But, but we'll do kalpas some other day, I apologize. Okay. We have to
rush or we won't...or you'll have another question that you won't know on the
next quiz. [laughter]

[student, Kylie: Is it possible that, you know maybe we, we would be willing to
go a couple more minutes and you just aren't aware of that or you really don't
want to go beyond that yourself?]

[student: He's trying to be considerate I think.]

Well I don't want people walking around at night. I could go on, but also I know
it's hard for me to sit in a class for more than two...it's easy to teach for three,
four hours but it's not the same...okay let's go. Please say {chu}[repeat], {kun
may}[repeat], {la}[repeat], {lo pon}[repeat], {du}[repeat], {trupa}[repeat], {che
gyang}[repeat], {toppa}[repeat], {tsen den}[repeat], {nay chik}[repeat], {mi kye}
[repeat], okay. Tonight we're gonna talk about...Dharma. Okay, what is the
Dharma. Alright? What is a...we got it here {nem sem...nyen jay}...I got it. By
the way you don't have to memorize this part or anything, it's just something I
want you to know. It's not gonna be on the quiz. This, this word you should
know.

[student: What, is that already written somewhere?]

Yeah, it's in the second line...of page sixteen, same page.

[student, Kylie: Are you sure we don't have to write down the first one?]

Absolutely.

[student, Kylie: I mean you're not gonna like translate it ]

Trick you or anything

[student, Kylie: A little further on?]

No, I, I'm gonna explain it right now. But it's not something that I want you to
memorize for this week anyway, I'll give you three short things to memorize.
But it's not that. Okay, we talked last week about what?
[students: Ten good qualities of a lama.]

Of a lama okay? And the point was that you should carefully examine a teacher
before you let him mess around with your spiritual real estate, before you open
your mind and let him tinker in ways that might permanently damage it. Check
him out...okay, don't just go to any teaching that you hear about, just don't go to
any initiation you hear about, try to find out more about the person doing it,
seeing if he matches up pretty well to those ten qualities...those ten qualities
were taught by who? Who said that a lama should have those ten qualities?

[student: Asanga.]

Asanga. But remember that everything that Asanga wrote was what?

[student, Kylie: From the Buddha.]

Maitreya dictated it to him. Okay? There's a big debate...in, in western scholars
you have to put arya slash Asanga because you're not allowed to admit that
Maitreya said it you know? [laughs] Ah...Maitreya taught it, Asanga went to
Maitreya's paradise and Maitreya taught Asanga the five great books of
Asanga...Asanga wrote the great books of the mind-only school, and then he
wrote some great books of the madhyamika school. Incredible, I mean just
incredible, he and his brother are responsible for about half the course. Okay.

[student: Who's his brother?]

His brother is {Vasubhandu}, who wrote the [b: Abhidharmakosha]. And they
were sons of a nun...who, had a vision that if she married the king of that
country that she would have these twins, and they would become the two
greatest buddhist scholars of...possibly all time, except for Nagarjuna [unclear]
but a...very interesting story. So she did, she didn't have any desire to, to, to
give up her vows but she saw that this would happen and it did. An incredible
[unclear]. So...those are, those qualifications of a lama are, are whose idea then?

[student: Maitreya.]

Maitreya the buddha, the buddha.

[student, Fran Dayan: The future buddha?]
They say future buddha I...that was my debate assignment when I did my pre-
geshe exam, in front of all the whole monastery and, and the bottom line in that
debate is that he is already a buddha. And that's a long story, I won't tell you the
whole debate. But a...in other words the buddha is describing to you the, the
qualities that a good teacher should have. In that...in those, those ten qualities
were prescribed by the Buddha himself...a buddha himself, Maitreya. Now what
naturally are we gonna discuss? So, that's the qualities of a teacher...do not go to
a Dharma teaching without checking out the teacher and finding out something
about him, trying to see if he has some of those qualities...or all of them. How
'bout...what do you, what do you guess is gonna come next?

[student: The qualities of a student?]

Good, qualities of a student or?

[student: Teacher?]

[student: Teaching?]

Or the qualities of a teaching. And that, in fact are the two points we're gonna
cover tonight. Okay? So we're gonna talk about {nyam}, say {nyam su}[repeat],
{ben chay}[repeat], {chu}[repeat], {nyam su} [repeat], {nyen chay} [repeat], {chu}
[repeat]...{chu} means what?

[students: Dharma.]

Dharma. {Chu} means "Dharma" that last word means Dharma. {Chos...chu}.
{Nyam su len chay} means "which, which you practice", "which is to be practiced",
and "Dharma that you can practice". {Nyam su len} means

[student, Kylie: [unclear] ]

{Nyam su len} means "to put into practice", {cha} means "which is to be". Okay?
A Dharma that you can put into practice. A Dharma that you can actually
practice yourself. {Nyam su len cha} means "hands-on...practical...something you
can do"...okay? The Dharma that you decide to make your daily practice, okay?
{Nyam su len chay chu}.

[student, Kylie: Is that a...Kyabje Pabongkha's [b: Lam Rim], similar to that? [b:
In Your Hands]?

Ah, sort of, ah sort of. Li...nah that's a little bit different.

[student, Kylie: A different [b: In Your Hands]?]

Yeah. That one's hard to translate, it's usually mistranslated. It means, if you
study with a good lama he can just...you know, here, stick your hand out. He
said, "Here's liberation." [unclear sound] [laughs] [laughter] You know you got
such a [unclear]. No that's what [b: Lun Du La Cha] means, the title of that book
is...it's not liberation in your hands meaning that's your problem. You know, 'it's
in your hands, I'm, I'm don't care.' It's

[student, Kylie: No, I just thought it was interesting you made it sound like it's
putting...the practice is like hands-on."]

It's, it's that [unclear].   You just, you hold out your hand and the lama goes,
"There you go."

[student, John Stilwell: The [unclear] that he gives to you.]

Yeah. It's, it's into the palm of your...into the palm of your hand.

[student, John Stilwell: He gives it into your hand?]

I don't know how to translate that but it, you know, it's, it's like, "Here, have it."
You know?

[student, John Stilwell: He puts it into your hand?]

[student: On a silver platter sort of ?]

Yeah like that. Yeah, on a silver platter would have been a good translation.
Anyway, what is the qua...what are the qualities that a, a good Dharma should
have? Okay, we, we, we defined a, a, an authentic teacher now we're gonna
define an authentic doctrine alright? And, and Kyabje Pabongkha says...{chu}
means what?

[student: Dharma.]
Dharma. Okay {chu} means "dharma". {Ku, ku} means "authoritative source,
good source...real source"...what do you call? Authoritative



[student, John Stilwell: Authentic?]

Authentic. It refers to the source, the {kum} of, of a river is the snow on the
mountain, for example. You say where is the {kum} of this Ganges river? Oh it's
the snow up on those Himalaya mountains. That's where it flows from, so
{kum} means "the teacher, the source from which it has come". {Kum meh}, I
think Kylie might know {meya}.

[student, Kylie: Is not.]

Right, or doesn't have. Sourceless, okay? Not having a good source. {Me}
means "not having a good source". Okay? You, you won't be quizzed on this, I
just want you to see this sentence, it's a beautiful sentence. {Kum may la}...{la}
means what? All the words 'to, in, at, for, on'...I mean learn tibetan, come on.
They're all one word in tibetan, {la}, okay? {La} means "to, t-o". You'll see what it
means. {Lo}...you guys know what {losar} is in tibet?

[student: [unclear] ]

[student: {Losar} is New Year's.]

Yeah {losar} is New Year's, {lo} means "year" and {sar} means "new". So {lo}
means "year...year". {Tong} is the {tong} in emptiness, same spelling but...this
word has nothing to do with that. This is another word of the same spelling. It
means "one thousand"...okay? {Lo tong} means "one thousand years". {Du}
means "for", f-o-r. {Druppa} in sanskrit is {siddha}. {Siddhartas} is {tundruk}.

[student: [unclear] ]

It means "to practice", "practice".

[student: {Siddha}?]

Yeah. {Siddha} is the result of practice, practiced. But this is the verb, practice.

[student: I thought that was spelled {druppa ka nay} or [unclear]? ]
That's...[unclear]. I think that's the {druk} for {dru ka nay}...{druppa chay}, {chay}
means "to do", "do...do". So, if I tell you that tibetan normally runs backwards
from english...Laura, how will you guess to translate this line so far?

[student, Laura: To do practice for a thousand years]

Of a {chu}

[student, Laura: Of, of a, of a Dharma that has no authority or source.]

Good, good, good, nice, nice, nice. Okay? You can practice, you can try to
practice for a thousand years a Dharma which has no source. Okay? Which is
not authoritative. {Kyang}, you can guess what {kyang} is.

[student, Vilma Staiano: But.]

But, good [laughs] nice, nice, okay? But, we had {topa}, it was a synonym for
{long}.

[student, Fran Dayan: [unclear] or idea.]

Realization. We can call them the three principal paths or we can call them the
three principal {topa}...{topa} means realization. {Topa} like is you, you've been
mediating on renunciation and suddenly one day you get up and you realize you
don't need a single thing in this world. You know? That means nothing, none of
it...you can use it, but you, you don't need any of it, you don't need one single
thing in New York City. Nothing. {Topa}. That would be a {topa}. {Tsenden}
means "authentic, real", "accurate, correct".

[student: {Tsenden} means accurate?]

Yeah. Real in the sense of...accurate, correct. You can come up with a {topa}
like...that's not {tsenden}, a {topa} that's not {tsenden} would be something
like.."Oh renunciation means I have to give up all my money today." And you
go outside and give away every...give all your money. It's not what, it's not
what renunciation is. You can...the, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama were
the two wealthiest people in Tibet, but they had renunciation. Okay? Doesn't
refer to how much you have, it's what you think about it and the Dalai Lama
used to say...one of the Dalai Lamas used to say, "I only own my bell and my,
my two ritual instruments, I don't own all the rest of this, I don't feel like it's
mine." Okay? {Tsenden}. {Nay chik} means "one sliver". Okay? One sliver,
{chik} means "one", {nay} means "like a sliver...tiny, tiny piece". {Mi kya}...you,
you know what that means. {Mi} is what? 'M' sounds in tibetan are always
what?

[student: Negative.]

Negative. Also female. [laughter] That's another thing...I'm not making a joke.
Not {kya}, {kya} means "develop, get". Okay? To get or to develop...so John if
you read it backwards...from the 'but' that Vilma supplied? You, you know you
can practice a thousand years a Dharma that has no authority, has no source, no
resource but

[student, John Stilwell: But, but will not develop one sliver of correct realization.]

Right, right. Okay? Impossible. And, and maybe you've had it happen to you, I
don't know, I don't judge it. But if you've gone to some teaching and if it was
{kung meh}...and you really did honestly try to practice it and nothing happen.
It won't. Okay?

[student, Kylie: So this is a...this {chu} here is referring to the general Dharma in
a]

So called

[student, Kylie: Not the capital Dharma the Dharma]

[student: [unclear] without the blessing of Marpa, it was a real Dharma but it
had not...no blessing from Marpa so nothing could [unclear] remember? It was a
real Dharma ]

Yeah.

[student: But he had no empowerment so nothing was happening and then he
wandered.]

Well maybe if there was no {kung} because he didn't get the [unclear].

[student: What's the translation of the second part there [unclear] ]
But you won't develop a si...a tiny one sliver of true realizations, if you don't...if
you...you can practice for a thousand years, some Dharma, and you've tried it,
you've had practices, you've gone to certain teachings in your life. There's
certain, I would say there's certain non-buddhist teachings that are just
impossible, they don't work, and you, and you try and you try and you
try...people try their whole lives and then they come to...really depressed and
they say just nothing happened. You know? After all these years nothing
happened...if nothing happens then there's only two possibilities: The Dharma is
defective, it's a, it's not a real Dharma...or, you're not practicing. But if it's a real
Dharma and if you practice it, some things gotta click, something's gotta happen,
some things will happen.

[student, Kylie: So you're saying and Milarepa perhaps is an example because no
matter how heinous a person you are, no matter how much bad obstructing
karma you may have, sooner or later it has to give if you're practicing an
authentic Dharma.]

Yeah, the Dhar...the Dharma is

[student, Kylie: It's not like it's all building up and then in your next life you're
gonna come out like knowing everything.]

No, not like that...and I say try it. Just try it. You know? I claim that the
Dharma you will learn is authentic. And then if, if you just try it, things will start
happening, then you will notice unusual things happening. Okay? {Tsunden nay
chay mi kay}...then he says, in his next line he says, "{Ma du nay chu tsu ba dan
galwa yin}" and I didn't write it up there. He says it's...and in Tibet butter is a big,
big deal. Okay? They live on butter, vegetables don't grow up there very well.
There's no bacteria, it's up high with this ultraviolet sunlight, you can keep butter
outside for years and it won't spoil. [laughter] You can read...well it kind of
[unclear].

[student, Kylie: Gets a little chewy after a while.]

By the way the yak, the yak is the bull, the yak is the male so never say yak
butter. Alright so, he says it's like, it's like if you wanted butter and you put
water into one of those tibetan churns, and you sat there for a thousand years
you know 'kkkhhhukkkhhhu-kkkhhhu' and nothing will happen, no butter will
ever come, it's impossible. And for a tibetan that example is very, you know, it's
like driving a car with no gas you know sitting in the car for years, 'rrrm-rrrm-
rrrm-rrrm' like that. It's a very much a part of tibetan culture. So what is
a...what is a {nyum so leng gay chu}, what is the Dharma that you should try to
practice? What kind of Dharma should you try to practice? We're gonna have
three qualities, okay? The three qualities are on your homework...and then
probably are on your quiz. And I'm gonna shorten them, they're in the text.
Okay?

[student, Kylie: Michael's anybody's taken the trouble to make some fonts for
the PC? Tibetan fonts?]

That's where these came from.

[student, Kylie: So those, those, that's an independent font program that'll work
with any word processor or it has to be theirs?]

No it only works with Word Perfect. But somebody made some true type fonts
that work with everything, but they don't quite work yet.

[student, Kylie: They don't work yet?]

He, he made a rough version and he went into a two year retreat [laughs], so
everybody's waiting. [laughter]

[student, Kylie: How far along is he in his retreat?]

Two months or something.

[student, Kylie: So he gave up on his font making.]

[student, Fran Dayan: Well maybe he's perfecting it there.]

[student, Kylie: But maybe he went into the retreat because of his attempt...to
get more virtue before he could finish it.]

This is the first quality okay? If I were gonna write it in tibetan it would look
something like...but don't worry about that.

[student: This is number one?]
That's like number one.

[student: We don't have to worry about this right?]

No. that's like...so please say {dunba}[repeat], {sanggye kyi}[repeat], {tsunba}
[repeat]. {Dunba}[repeat], {sanggye kyi}[repeat], {tsunba}[repeat], the first
quality of a {nyam su leng jay chu}, okay? The first quality of a {nyam su leng
jay chu}. And it's no...it's a very important point, you know, do not...expose
your mind, your precious mind which is very...plastic, you know? Whatever
you expose it to it will take on that shape...to a Dharma, or so-called Dharma,
which is not...which doesn't have these three qualities, it's, it's like poison. It's
poison, and it will hurt you. Your mind takes on the quality of the Dharma that
you think of...[unclear]. You know, you wouldn't expose your body to AIDS
virus and blah-blah-blah...a, a bad Dharma can hurt you much, much worse it
can kill you for many lives. Yeah yeah, probably [unclear] alright? It's very very
serious, you're at what, what...your spiritual real estate is very fragile, very
young, like a young bud, very sensitive, and easily poisoned, and you have to be
very careful who you let fool around with your mind, your spiritual mind. So
their teaching, you should check out what he's teaching, the first quality is that
{dunba}...{dunba} means what? It means the Teacher, capital 'T'. You know who
that is, the Teacher.

[student, Kylie: {Sanggye? Sanggye} is the Teacher.]

Yup, that {sanggye}, what's {sanggye} mean?

[students: Buddha.]

Buddha. The Teacher the Buddha. In our world meaning Shakyamuni Buddha
or sometimes Maitreya. Yeah?

[student, Kylie: Is it Teacher comma the Buddha or the Teacher the Buddha?]

Buddha, the Teacher. When we say {dunba} in tibetan, everybody knows what
we're talking about...the Teacher, capital 'T', meaning, it doesn't even refer to
your own lama, it only refers to Shakyamuni Buddha, normally. {Dunba
sanggye...kyi} means "by him". {Tsumba}. {Tsumba} means "stated, said...said,
spoke". Spoken by the Buddha.

[student, John Stilwell: Which is by him?]
The {kyi} is the by. So I...as, as in normal in tibetan, you would go backwards.
That {nyam su leng jay chu}, that Dharma which you...allow yourself to practice,
that Dharma which you give your precious lifetime to...the precious moments of
your day that you have available for Dharma practice, which are very
few...should have been stated by the Buddha, should have been taught by the
Buddha. That eliminates, in my opinion, a hell of a lot of teachings [laughs]
okay?

[student, John Stilwell: So much out there]

No, there is a lot of weird stuff. People...you know, it's that americans don't
know. Americans are fresh in the Dharma, they're naive, they're
innocent...there's like a whole thousands of these guys over there, they come
over, they, they dream of coming to America. And, and you know, letting loose
with their latest philosophy you know, and for whatever motivation. You
know? I don't know. But, but eventually people like you will...I mean people are
becoming more sophisticated now, americans are learning, "Oh yeah well that's
not Dharma." You know? "That's obviously not Dharma. It's obviously you
can't find that in...ever spoken by the Buddha, that's just this guy's own idea."

[student, Kylie: Are you talking about tibetans when you say these people
coming over here or people from India or I mean a?]

I'm talking about tibetans. I'm talking about [unclear]. People like you will get
educated in, in what you will come to obviously learn is, is the buddhism that the
Buddha taught, and then you'll pick up one of those books and you'll say, "You
know it sounds nice but it's wrong, I never heard anything like that." You know
you, you will come to that.

[student, Fran Dayan: Does that mean it's the sutras that, that...that's the only
thing that he really]

I...I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna [unclear].

[student: There's a book called 'What the Buddha Never Taught' [laughs]
[laughter]]

No really. Then it, it...the time will come, you know, what will happen is those
'teachings' quote will die out 'cause they don't work. You know? And they
weren't taught by the Buddha.

[student, John Stilwell:   There's always a fresh crop to replace the [unclear]
[laughs] ]

Do...by the way, what is the quality of the Buddha? I mean, what...he's
omniscient. He, he sees us right now, the Buddha of two, two thousand five
hundred years ago...he, he has the quality of being here, he's absolutely here.
He is here as much as you or I am. He's here all the time. And, and so do you
have to update the Buddha, you know, or do you have to...om...omniscient
being doesn't know what John Stilwell's gonna be thinking twenty-four hours
from now, or what's appropriate from...for him. No!        He, he's okay, don't
worry. [laughter] He, he knows what to teach. He knows what to do. You
know you don't have to worry Molly you know.

[student: But the Dalai Lama has said that if modern science proves that
something that was taught by the Buddha is incorrect, that you have to go with
modern science.]

But it won't.

[student: But I think it already has in a couple of instances, it had to do with the
cosmolo...the reckoning of time [unclear] ]

His Holiness is trying to...accommodate westerners, he's learned to do that. But
I...if you study the [b: Abhidharma] which you will, you will study cosmology
and it seems pretty weird...well there's this plate of gold and under that there's a
whirlwind and, the ocean lies on that gold and...and you, you may think at that
point, and I've heard his Holiness say, that cosmology seems to be wrong...when
you reach Madhyamika, and the teaching of the glass and the wa...you guys had
it, some of you...in the last...we had the teaching of...Moll maybe you were
there? [laughter] Then you'll see that the cosmology is quite, quite...quite
possible. You know, it's very interesting. He has to accommodate westerners,
he can't go around saying, "Yes the world is a two [unclear]"

[student: Actually I think the remark wasn't, was not directed at westerners, it
was directed at tibetans.]

Even more for them, who are exposed to science and, and don't understand
buddhism. So anyway
[student, Kylie: But it also presupposes, you know, carried in its extreme if it's
correct western science which is not always the case either, I mean you know
these, a lot of this stuff is theorizing and, and getting changed [unclear] ]

Well the highest teachings of modern science as I understand them, in the
small...I was...studied some physics and mind theory recently stuff like that, and
it's quite, quite

[student, Kylie: Western science say you got to drill holes in peoples heads you
know.]

[student, Vilma Staiano: That, that omniscience is...comes from understanding
something very well so that you can know that past and not the future?]

No, there's a debate about it. She brought up a good point and it's brought up in
the [b: Abhidharmakosha]. They say, "Is the Buddha's omniscience simply a, a, a
very incredible ability to extrapolate the future? Based on what he sees now and
based on his incredible intellect...does he deduce the future?" No, he sees it
directly. Okay? It's interesting. But that point is, is debated.

[student, John Stilwell: And the concept of linear time is no longer there.]

Yeah, he sees all time, and all places in one moment...and more, and more, more
revolutionary which you can't appreciate fully yet, is that he can see emptiness
directly and he can still experience normal objects directly, which is totally
impossible for us. Okay so {dunba sanggye du tsumpa} means the first quality of
a, of a Dharma which you...which you allow to enter your life, and take up your
precious time, is that the Buddha should have taught it. Okay? I'll give you
some examples...I, I xeroxed the table of contents of the canon, okay? What is
in...what, what do we have left that the Buddha said? Okay, just for your interest
okay? We're working on a project to input the whole thing on computer and
a...so there're a thousand books left, if you want to be exact it's eleven hundred
and eight...that were...that are the...are considered speech of the Buddha. In
tibetan. Tibetan has the most of any other language. Tibet...more, more of the
Buddha's speech is preserved in tibetan than in any other current language.
Chinese

[student, Kylie: Now does that mean Shakyamuni while he was here on earth or
does it also mean [unclear] speaking with Maitreya?]
It also includes, it also includes former buddhas. The, the teachings of Maitreya,
since he is only considered a buddha in the secret teachings of buddhism, and not
in the open teachings of buddhism, were put into the commentaries...the human
commentaries. Which were not...I haven't got that...to that yet, okay?

[student, Kylie: And, and then the teachings of Tsongkhapa as dictated by
Gentle Voice for instance would be in which category?]

Would be considered...in the commentaries, okay? The, the...what we have left,
of the eighty-four thousand...huge collections of teachings that the Buddha gave,
is called the [b: Kangyur]. The first western people to ever come across these
books, came across them in east Tibet, and the eastern tibetans call them
{conjur}, like, "Hey y'all doin' this is Buddha's speech." [spoken with a heavy
western accent] [laughter] [unclear] and so for all, all these years western
scholars have mispronounced this word, {conjur}, so if you see it spelled {conjur}
you know why, okay? It's their [unclear] alright? It's {kangyur} okay? {Ka}
means, {ka} means "the word". Okay? {Gyur} means "translated", why is it called
that?

[student: Because it's in tibet?]

It's translated from sanskrit. Okay? It was originally written in sanskrit, spoken
in sanskrit, and we have it in the translation. Okay, so the, the canon that we
now have, what we have left of the Buddha's speech, the eleven hundred books,
which fits into a hundred volumes, a hundred big...volumes...we have one down
in New Jersey, that's what we have down in New Jersey...that's the
Buddha's...direct teaching by a buddha.

[student, John Stilwell: Of all the teachings of the Buddha, how many are
speculated as lost you know there're a thousand remaining extant, so think they
lost another thousand?]

There's a big discussion of it in the [b: Abhidharmakosha]. You'll get there.
[unclear]

[student, Kylie: You mean there was eleven thousand at the time of the [b:
Abhidharmakosha]? Or there's been some loss since then?]

No. A lot lost since then. Many, many lost since then...but even in the time of
the [b: Abhidharmakosha] it was recognized as...it's generally considered
that...you could say somewhere around three or four hundred thousand ]

[student: Books?]

Texts.

[student, John Stilwell: And there's a thousand left.]

There was a great massacre of buddhism during the eighth, ninth century by
moslems who came to India, and every book was burned, every monastery was
destroyed. There is no buddhism left in India [unclear]

[student, Kylie: Now was that a Dharma that did that or, or was that would-be
Dharma that did that, heh-heh-heh-heh?]

Okay [b:       Kangyur, Kangyur] okay?           The general structure of the [b:
Kangyur]...I'll just read it to you, you don't have to know that it's not on the...but
just so you know the kinds of books that are in the [b: Kangyur]. The first
section of the [b: Kangyur] is called {dulwa}, which means "vinaya"...and that's
the whole section on vowed morality. There are eight different types of vows
that a person can take. And that whole, that whole first section of the [b:
Kangyur] is devoted to the, to vowed morality as shown. That will be the last
subject that you study in the five year course. No, because by then you gotta be
a monk or a nun actually. [laughs] No, you don't have to be, you can take
lifetime layman's vows, five vows, which everybody should take by then. And
then you're allowed to study it so I couldn't teach you that at the beginning. So
that's vinaya. The next category is the perfection of wisdom. And those are those
really famous sutras about emptiness, you've heard a lot about [unclear]

[student, Kylie: [unclear]? ]

Yeah, [unclear]

[student: I, I need to ask you a question, {dulwa} is the name of the first section
and vinaya is the name of the [unclear] ]

Is the, is the sanskrit translation of {dulwa}. {Dulwa} is a tibetan word, and
vinaya is the sanskrit word. The tibetans translated the word vinaya as {dulwa}
meaning "that which tames you, that which controls you", it's the same word as
this first quality that we have for a lama.

[student: And also did you say, you said eleven hundred books, a hundred
volumes ]

Yeah.

[student: Of what is left of the canon?]

Of, of the Buddha's speech, the Buddha's own speech. The speech of an
enlightened being, we only have left eleven hundred books. Well I mean, it's
probably more than that...if you want to know, it's the amount of scriptures you
could write with the ink that could be carried on the back of the elephant of
Indra, who can carry like tons, and that's the, that's the actual measurement.
[laughs]

[student, Kylie: So where do we get the hundred and eight sutras from? Those
are a special sub-category? I thought there was a hundred and eight sutras.]

Well there is a...that's what I'm getting to next. Next there are three, there are
three sections of sutras. They are called...they are basically the sutra sections.

[student, Laura: This is the third section?]

Yeah there's more sections than that but I'm just trying to abbreviate it for you.
The next three sections are all basically basic sutras. Sutra means "teaching of the
Buddha which is not secret...teaching by the Buddha himself, which is not secret".
By the way, in the second or third course, you will study these things very, very
deeply. You'll go into them very deeply. What is the Buddha's teaching?
{Sabhuti} goes like that to his student, is it the Buddha's word? You know, can
the Buddha pretend to be a tree and teach you something by, by whispering a
certain way in the wind. He can, and he will, and he does...it's very interesting
and you will study all those sections of the way he can teach people, it's in, it's in
the [b: Perfection of Wisdom] which we will study in the second or third course.
Okay. The next section, and I'll call it the final section, is the tantras. Tantra
means "a secret teaching given directly by the Buddha".

[student: Is the three vehicles? Is that three vehicles?]

No,     no   that's a   different   thing, that's a   different   thing.      Tantra
means...tantra...you can divide the whole speech of the Buddha into the open
speech, which anyone can study, and then the secret speech which you need
permission to study and...what do you, what else do you need to study?

[student, Kylie: {Wong} ]

Naaah. Give me a good answer. What do you need to study tantra?

[students: [unclear] ]

{Lam tso nam sum}. Trying to practice tantra, without {lam tso nam sum}, is at
best nothing happens, and normally a big disaster, something very bad will
happen, you will screw up your spiritual real estate for thousands of years.

[student, Kylie: So you can get {wang} without {lam tso nam sum}...is that what
you said?]

Yeah, you can go to initiation and try to take an initiation without having {lam
tso nam sum} and at best nothing would happen, and at worst you'd have some
real disasters.

[student, Kylie:   So what you me...what you say is somebody can get an
empowerment ]

They wouldn't get an empowerment.

[student, Kylie: Without ]

They would sit in the empowerment, when everyone would say John Stilwell
was at the Kalachakra, but he didn't [unclear]

[student, Kylie: He couldn't pry the book open and ]

Nothing would happen in his mind.

[student: It seems pretty extreme.]

No, the tantra is the result of {lam tso nam sum}. It is the natural...I wanted to
emphasize that...it is the natural outcome, of {lam tso nam sum}. {Lam tso nam
sum} is a seed: you plant it, you put all the water, heat, good fertilizer...and what
comes up is tantra. And you can't stop it, once you've got all the heat, fertilizer,
water, good seed...you know, you couldn't stop it if you wanted to, you could
stand there and say, "Don't come up! Don't come up! Don't come up!" You
know, 'nnnrrrrrr'. And then if you stand there in front of a desert and beg this
thing to come up, it cannot come up, it will never come up...tantra is a natural
outcome of, of knowing the {lam tso nam sum}. It will just come, you know,
you will experience it, it'll happen to you. But not without those three principal
paths, impossible.

[student: Michael is this secret? Can this also be in the sense of [unclear] secret,
in other words your mind isn't ripe and you're...it doesn't [unclear]]

In a way it's secret by, by definition, yeah. You could do

[student: I mean not only that you were not given the teachings yet.]

Yeah yeah absolutely, absolutely, if you don't have {lam tso nam sum}...you, you
won't...it'll always be a secret. [laughs] Really. You'll hear everything and, and
nothing'll happen. And you know many people who've gone to many, many
initiations, and just nothing happens.

[student, Kylie: So then, so then, why is it secret? It's secret because people who
don't have {lam tso nam sum} might try to interpret it anyway, isn't that
correct?]

Well why is it secret? I don't know I've never studied it. [laughs] Alright, second
quality

[student, John Stilwell: Did you say that tantra had secret open sections that was
the [unclear]?]

No, no, the whole Buddha's word is what we call {do ngan}, sutra and tantra.

[student, John Stilwell: And all the tantra is secret [unclear] ]

Tantra means "secret", the word means [unclear]

[student, John Stilwell: I thought like action tantra and such are just taught open
[unclear]. ]
They teach 'em openly but...

[student, John Stilwell: Not supposed to.]

Not supposed to. Second quality. [silence-sort of]

[student, Kylie: This the second one here?]

Yeah. Second quality of an authentic teaching that is worth your time.

[student, Vilma Staiano: It, it seems to me that the first one...is assuming sort of
too much already it doesn't...]

How so?

[student, Vilma Staiano: Well I mean you have to assume that, that the Buddha
is, is...that those ideas are something that have some ]

Merit.

[student, Vilma Staiano: Yeah.]

Yeah, but that's a question...

[student, Kylie: Can I say something right here?]

Let me say something first. There's a section in, in, in...that we study, which is
called {tsenmay, tsenmay kay ru druppa, tsenma druppa} it's the second chapter
of the [b: Pramana Vratica] which is the root logic text, composed by
Dharmakirti in maybe the seven hundreds. He spends a whole chapter on
proving that the Buddha can't lie. Okay?

[student, Vilma Staiano: That, that the Buddha ]

Cannot lie. And, and all I say is this, when you enter buddhism at the beginning,
there's a certain amount of...attraction to it, there's something that causes you to
get into it beyond...you can't know that it's correct before you study it, so there's
something that attracts you to it, for me, and I think for most people, it was the
teaching that everything is suffering. You know, that was so accurate in...to my
experience, and the teaching that things start to fall apart the minute they start.
You know? Those two ideas attracted me as a young man, to me, I...that was
such an accurate description of what I had already experienced in my life, that I
thought, "Well this is worthwhile...this must be worthwhile." And that's all, you
have to...there's something that attracted you at the beginning...at the beginning
it's...you can't know it's right because you haven't studied it yet.

[student: Michael in the burning house sutra? [unclear] there's a sutra there is
[unclear]]

[unclear]

[student: Yeah Buddha is, is really justifying lying, right?]

Well he's justifying is tracking people by saying something that's not true, just to
get them to the right view, at the beginning.

[student, Kylie: But, what about Rinpoche taught us that the Buddha taught that
of course when you first come to something like Dharma, if you knew it already
you wouldn't need the Dharma so, but on the other hand you have a certain
amount of wisdom to begin with and a certain amount of responsibility and you
check, he said, "Don't accept what I say on faith", cook it, you know, cut it, burn
it, scratch it, it's like gold you know and use your own wisdom and you come to
Dharma with a certain amount of wisdom already, and the fact that, I think
Rinpoche told me that's why I'm supposed to put my thumbs inside my fingers
like that to signify that I'm coming to the Dharma with some wisdom already
[unclear]. ]

Okay so please say {panditay}[repeat], {gyun}[repeat], {selwa}[repeat], {panditay}
[repeat], {gyun}[repeat], {selwa}[repeat]. {Pandit} is a pandit, it's a sanskrit word
that came into [unclear] tibetan.

[student, Kylie: Into english too, right, pundit.]

[student: A wise man?]

Yeah it means a, a...yeah, a wise man, a master.

[student, Kylie: Political pundit in the news, right?]

Yeah, that's from the anglo-indian. {Gyun} means...don't write anything down,
help me with it. It means "problem, fault, defect"...it's, it's what could have crept
into the teachings up to the time that they got to us. [unclear] {Selwa} means
"to, to clear away, clean them out".

[student: Corruption [unclear]?]

{Gyun}s...like a

[student, Kylie: Impurities, or misplaced [unclear] ]

Corruptions is good.

[students: [unclear] ]

Well textual and, and prac...practice. We, we get a lot of {gyun}s going on now-a-
days and we're trying to {selwa} them supposedly right now. {Selwa}, clear
them, try to remove them. Okay? It means that in any teaching, you know,
certain wrong ideas start to make their appearance, I could give you a few in
modern buddhism that the idea that nirvana means some kind of nothingness
that you reach and you go into nothing. That's not a buddhist teaching at all.
Nirvana is the permanent cessation of your bad emotions, you can attain it right
now.

[student, Kylie: Are you saying then that there are some buddhist schools that
are misrepresenting nirvana or this is some people who really aren't buddhist
academics who are saying interpreting]

That's one and the other one is obviously emptiness, the idea that emptiness
means no meaning, the idea that emptiness means nothing has any nature and
therefore you can do whatever you want. It's totally, totally opposite of what it
[unclear], it's totally wrong. Totally wrong. And that's a {gyun}.

[student: [unclear] some lama was writing that the six realm, you know when
they, they tend to create fear on you but is a psychological state]

That's bullshit too.

[student: That's bullshit too?]

Yeah, complete bullshit.
[student: The what?]

That there's no hell. Hell is a, a psychological state of human being...forget it!
Completely wrong.

[student: But how come some, some teachers will say, well if you're, you know,
you'll either be born in like this hot hell or, if you're born as a human then, these
circumstances in your human life will prevail.]

That's right, that's correct.

[student: Well how, what determines whether you will ]

[unclear] people in this, in, in this country teaching that those six realms: desire
realm, and the hell realm, human realm, that they don't exist that they're
psychological states of a human being, that's completely wrong.

[student, John Stilwell: That they're metaphorical?]

They're not metaphorical. It's completely wrong. It's a {gyun}. And like that,
you...there's a lot and they're coming more and more because lamas are learning
english, they come over and they write their own ideas you know, and, and it
gets strange.

[student, John Stilwell:        Are there that many really half-baked...lamas over
there?]

[student, Kylie: It's a good question, I mean is it...are these people really lamas
are they half-baked lamas at this point or they're, they're totally not lamas I
mean?]

There's a lot of tibetans teaching who don't have any training. They're not
referring to this...to the scriptures at all. They don't know any of them. They're,
they're just telling you what they think or what maybe they heard from
somebody. But they don't have any background in the, in the teachings. They,
they don't have...you, you find the quotation in some of their books from any
buddhist scripture. [unclear] you won't [unclear]

[student, Kylie: Are these monks and nuns or are these ?]
I say just...you can judge for yourself in a few years okay? You can judge for
yourself. I don't have to point out this person, this person...you can judge for
yourself, you learn the sutras, and you learn the {shastas}, the commentaries,
the, the real commentaries, the real words of the Buddha. As he said them. In,
in the books. And then you can check out books and you can say...I open up a
book now-a-days I go, "Yeah, please...gimme a break!" You know you just read
one page and you say, "Come on!" You know, "There's no such thing in the, in
the scriptures."

[student: It seems so esoteric into a real [unclear] ]

Well there's a, there's a like, what'd-you-call-it? Good feeling, good feeling, good
heart, being nice...that's not the goal. You want omniscience so you can help
people. You want a body that doesn't change. You want a {dharmakaya} and a
{rupakaya}, we studied it. You want to reach total enlightenment so you can
help people. It's not that you're gonna live in a dirty, mortal, suffering body like
this and have a nice attitude, or be kind of friendly you know? [laughter] No,
it's not and don't let, don't let'em, don't let'em cheat...don't let'em short change
you with that. That the point of the teaching is to remove your suffering
forever, mental and physical, in this life you can obtain a kind of body which will
never have suffering again. And a kind of mind which will never have a bad
thought, never be upset again period, never have any mental suffering again
forever. That's the goal, it's not to...you know, we're more friendly than other
religions. [laughter] No, it's a big trap, it's a big problem...you go for the big
time, you'll get the...you'll be friendly too. [laughter][laughs] No you will, you
really will. Okay, so...{panditos} which means "the great historical masters" must
have...and, and in his texts Pabongkha says, "They must have checked whether
or not there are problems in the teaching, they must have ripped it apart,
analyzed it, debate it, written, argued with each other...logically come to the
conclusion that this is a...this is not part of the teaching, this is some kind of a
defect which has gotten into the teaching." And, and I'll tell you something...after
you've read three or four of the great books, and then you pick up any other
book, you'll spot it, it sticks out, you know, you'll say, "No no, this is...I've read a
translation of the [b: Diamond Cutter Sutra] the other day you know...just
ridiculous." You know? And you just pick it up and you say, "That's...he
wouldn't say that." A lot of translating ability later, comes from knowing what
it's supposed to say.

[end side one of tape]
You know, you see something unusual like the [b: Heart Sutra] says, "Emptiness
is, is, is...is colors, and shapes" and you say, "Oh well, it's...I know it's not, it must
be some kind of an allegory or something." And it is. Okay so...by the way,
these are the commentaries then, these are the classical commentaries and they
are all in a collection called the [b: Tengyur].

[student, Kylie: So pundit's corruption is clear...pundit's a clear the, kept the text
clear of corruption?]

The teachings.

[student, Kylie: The teachings.]

Yeah clean. They have constantly, they are constantly reviewing, constantly
analyzing, constantly comparing it with what is known to be pure, and they are,
they are doing the process of what we're doing tonight, we're trying to isolate
ideas that are...have crept into so-called buddhism, that don't belong to
buddhism at all.

[student, Kylie: And then they...get rid of them.]

Publish their results.

[student, Kylie: But then is that, is this like an example of different schools for
instance, that a, you know there's an idea crept in and some people adhere to it
and what's the famous...{Kamalashila} I think is the one that Rinpoche talks
about and, and somebody tried to disprove that person and then that was found
to be not correct ]

Yeah that's a good example but the famous debate, probably it's the ninth
century I think, or tenth century, a, a, a indian...master wanted to teach
that...what emptiness really was. We just say lack of cause and effect...a, a lack of
a lack of cause and effect. And chinese master wanted to say that emptiness
means nothing. And when you meditate on emptiness the point is to just clear
your mind...peaceful...let it float into the void. [laughter] And they debated it in
the court of the king of Tibet, and, and {Kamalashila} won and the chinese
was...his name was {Washang} and he was banned, and those teachings were
banned from Tibet.
[student, Laura: They were put in the [unclear] ]

They were, they were banned. They were not allowed to be taught. This, this,
this very, very bad view, this poisonous view that emptiness means 'oh,
nothing'. {Tengyur} then means...{ten} means "commentaries...of a human
being".

[student: But the second qualities are really [unclear] ]

I, I'm, I'm giving it that way, it doesn't technically, technically that could be works
like [unclear] in the {tengyur} [unclear] certainly [unclear]. But I'm just giving
you...the, the prime example of this would be the {tengyur}...{ten} means
"commentaries, written by a human being...as opposed to a buddha". {Gyur}
you know already, what?

[student: Written?]

What, what was the {gyur} in [b: Kangyur]?

[student: Translated.]

Translated. These are the translated classical commentaries by early indian
masters: Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubhandu, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti,
Aryadeva...these are the great commentaries of...of early, of early buddhism.

[student, John Stilwell: So you're saying the [b: Tengyur] the commentaries are
the sort of tearing apart analyzing of the Buddha's word?]

Yeah, incredible.    Incredible.   And then you have a whole lineage of
commentaries up to the things we will study.        Which are written in the
seventeenth century, eighteenth century, like that.

[student, John Stilwell: So since, since we're relying so much upon the masters to
tear apart, analyze and validate those teachings, what is the likelihood of the
masters having incorrect view, flawed analysis, etc.?]

Oh there are...books written about that subject. In fact I just sent one to the
publisher today, in tibetan. There's a whole study of that subject and you'll get to
it. We'll spend a lot of time on it.
[student, John Stilwell: My question is is it likely that a lot of that has
happened...what is the Buddha's teaching, were the masters have incorrectly
[unclear] ]

[student, Kylie: Yeah is, are they, are they really, are they really scrutinizing the
Buddha's teaching or are they scrutinizing the bodies of texts that were available
at the time that they were alive to see if it was the Buddha's teaching or not?]

Both. But also just what accords with, with buddhist practice which fits the
third...thing which I'm gonna tell you about, but...basically you'll see that the
great teachers of buddhism have actually taken slight...Asanga for example,
taught the mind-only school, he did not accept the mind-only school, he is the
founder of the mind-only school. He didn't believe the mind-only school, he
didn't accept the mind-only school, he wrote all the books for the mind-only
school. Okay?

[student, Kylie: Did he, I mean change his mind later or he ]

No he wrote them while he was already a madhyamika.

[student, Kylie: And this was for people who couldn't deal with madhyamika]

For people who needed that particular teaching he taught it. His brother
Vasubhandu was not a [unclear], he, he was not an {Abhidharma} student, but
he wrote the book. For the benefit of people who couldn't handle the higher
teaching. So we'll get to that. We'll get to that, very interesting. What's the third
quality? We'll do the third quality and then we'll take a break. By the way, I
wanna give you just some idea of the contents of the [b: Tengyur]. [b:
Tengyur] contains about...thirty-four hundred works. Thirty-four hundred
separate works.

[student, John Stilwell: Works being books, verses?]

Aaah...treatises. Some of them take up a thousand pages, some of them about
take three pages. They are contained in about two hundred and sixteen
volumes, something like...depends on the edition. Okay?

[student, John Stilwell: You say thirty-four hundred or thousand?]

Thirty-four hundred.
[student, Kylie: What's the third, could we guess on it then?]

Yeah, hang on a second. I'll give you some of the contents of the [b: Tengyur],
okay? And you don't...you're not going to get quizzed on it, just for your own
information. The first big section of the [b: Tengyur] is tantra...commentaries on
tantra. In there you get Naropa's commentaries on tantra. And then the
perfection of wisdom...which is the lower of the two madhyamika schools. So
basically the [b: Tengyur] already, in the [b: Tengyur] you see the four great
schools of buddhism. And that's what you're gonna study in the next five years.
You're gonna study the four great schools of ancient buddhism.

[student, John Stilwell: Is the perfection of wisdom the same as the {Prajna
Parameter} in the [b: Kangyur]? The commentary on it.]

Aah, same name, slightly different meaning. By the...[cut?]

[student: And, and what is it?]

Middle way, madhyamika. The word {madhya} comes from sanskrit, it came
into english as medium, middle. The word middle comes from

[student: [unclear] something to do with middle child?           Maybe she was the
second child. ]

No no.

[student: She's a second turn on the wheel? I don't [unclear] ]

We'll study it. In fact it will be in the second course we're gonna study that, the
three turnings of the wheel, when did the...they teach madhyamika, when did
they teach perfection of wisdom, when did they teach tantra. The next

[student: [unclear] is it german that we learned [unclear] ]

Yeah yeah...the next category is {doe del} which is commentaries on sutras.
Direct {doe del} which means they take a specific sutra and they explain it to you.
For example you would get in there, you would get...Asanga's commentary to
the [b: Diamond Cutter Sutra], or Kamalashila's commentary to the same book.
[student, Kylie: So the tantric section would be just commentaries on the tantra
in general as, as ]

Yeah by the way the tantric section is huge, it's two thousand volumes, two
thousand works are just devoted to tantra.

[student, Kylie: Right but they're not on any specific tantra.]

No they are, yeah, there'll be like twenty commentaries on the {Kalachakra}
tantra.

[student, Kylie: Oh I see when you say commentaries on sutras you mean
commentaries on open teachings of the Buddha and then the tantras, the tantra
commentaries are commentaries on closed teachings of the Buddha.]

Right.

[student, Kylie: I get it.]

Next is the mind-only school, okay? {Sem tsang}. {Cittramatra}. Very, very,
very interesting. That is the incredible presentation of how karma is stored in
your mind. Very interesting. Next is {Abhidharma}...next is {abhidharma},
{abhidharma} is the lower school of the four and we're gonna spend some good
time on that, because their presentation for example of karma, is unequalled.
Their presentation of karma is accepted by everybody...their presentation of the
vows, is, is the system that we go by, monks in the tibetan tradition, we follow
that.

[student: Vows of morality?]

We...the whole yeah, the whole {vinaya} comes from the hinyana. And then you
get the actual {vinaya}, the commentaries on {vinaya}. Then you get birth
stories, {kyer ub}, which are

[student: [unclear]? ]

They're called birth stories. These are the {jataka}, these are the...what happened
in former lives of the Buddha. The, the, the birth stories, okay, what did he do?

[student: When he gave himself ]
When he gave himself to the tiger, that's in a sutra called [b: The Golden Light
Sutra], {Sa vana pa va} it's beautiful, fantastic. We read...that was the first thing
we ever read in these classes twelve years ago.

[student: But...Michael in this book they say that Buddha took three long year to
prepare himself to do it, so how can...how come tantric student can deliberate
that, but the different deliberator to become a buddha [unclear] ]

No no no, no, full Buddha with tantra in this life, equivalent to ten to the sixtieth
power times thirty.

[student, Kylie: Well maybe it's a, you're not, you don't mean to say that the
Buddha completed his Buddhahood without tantra do you?]

[student: He does what?]

He did. [unclear] Here we go. The next are epistles, letters, and those, for
example, Nagarjuna's letter to the king, Nagarjuna's friendly letter, these are
letters that...the small verse works that famous scholar pandits wrote to the
kings for example. The next category, is called {pramana} and that means
"logic"...logic, the study of logic and perception. It's incredible, you'll really enjoy
it. How do you see things? You know, how do you image things? What's the
nature of it...this is where we start to get into today, we'll get...when we get there
you'll have all your answers, okay? A monk s...

[student, Kylie: I'll believe it when I image it.]

A monk spends eighteen years...we spend about three months a year, we stop
all our other studies and we just do logic and perception for three months. And
in the final months you do it like sixteen hours a day...debate...you're debating
about twelve hours a day. And it's incredible, you'll, you'll really like it. Next are
{dra dol}...then you get into what we call the minor sciences of buddhism, {dra
do} means "the study of sanskrit". This is not, again, this is not out of the spiritual
realm, these are the technical books, okay? {Dra do} are the old hindu scriptures
on how to read sanskrit, how to...it's about [unclear] grammar, things like that.
Then you get {tso rikpa} which means "medical, the medical scriptures". The
great books on medicine. Then you get {tsor rikpa} which is the great books on
the fine arts:       painting, sculpture, constructing mandalas, constructing
stupas...very interesting stuff.
[student: Tsoring?]

{Tsor rim}, as opposed to {tso rikpa}, which is medicine. [laughs]

[student: So that's like the five sciences.]

Yeah, now we get to the minor sciences, yeah. Then you have {tu mong way lu
gyi denja} which means "these are treatises which are accepted by both buddhists
and nonbuddhists"...examples there's a [b: Ratna Sutra] the...how to evaluate
gem stones. There's a sutra...there's a lot of {shastra}s on how to run a
government, things like that. And that's basically it, there's, there's a few
min...other sections but I just wanted to give you an idea of the structure. There
are some non-buddhist texts in the [b: Tengyur], but when I say [b: Tengyur]
I'm referring only to the buddhist sections. There are hindu grammar texts...the
{Rik Veda}, the {Veda}s are in there, they're in the [b: Tengyur].

[student: [unclear] ]

Yeah, they're called {rikjay}, very interesting. There's, there's sections of {rikjay}
in the, in the [b: Tengyur], and, and the ancient, some of the ancient, like {dandi},
the great poetry, the {ka vi a}, the, the, the fantastic sanskrit poetry is in there.
{Nega du da}, if you've ever read it it's incredible. {Dandi}...like, incredible poetry
like what-do-you-call-it, like the Odyssey, something like that.

[student, Kylie: Why, why would those kinds of works be included in the [b:
Tengyur]?]

Just because a...it's considered a...desirable after you've finished your spiritual
studies, to learn some of those things so that you can, you can be more effective.
If you can build a good stupa you'd be a more effective buddhist, but you're not
allowed to study those until you've finished your philosophical studies and your
tantric studies.

[student, John Stilwell:    You can relate to people better too if you're more
[unclear] ]

Yeah if you know medicine

[student, Kylie: [unclear] how to, how to make a nice government I mean is that
like because people ask good buddhists how to do that if they're renowned
enough?]

Yeah, there's a lot of

[student, Kylie: So this is like the orthodox view of making governments?]

No, not, it's not a {num bay} science. [sound of phone ringing] There's another
phone here. I mean there is a phone but it can't be that one.

[student, Kylie: It's not something that the Buddha taught about making
governments it's the impression that the people who follow the Buddha would
have about making?]

No it's [unclear] It's a hindu work on how to run a good government. It's not
buddhist, no. But it was just considered a, a literary classic at the time when they
were putting [unclear]

[student, Kylie: Is this to make great scholars you know]

You're supposed to know.

[student, Kylie: Good at cocktail parties or something?]

Okay, you were gonna get [unclear]

[student: [unclear] seems that local culture and social thing mixed up together
with it.]

At the end. No, there's a specific dividing line. These are the non-buddhist
sciences. Okay, or they're sciences which are {tu moe ah}, {tu moe ah}
means...you know, they know how to build stupas and we know how to build
stupas and we both agree on how to build stupa. What do you guess is number
three?

[student, Kylie: That it works. That it works. That it has results.]

That's true. That's, that's what it is.

[student, John Stilwell: Like was it...do people really learn or read the entire [b:
Kangyur] and [b: Tengyur]? ]

I mean in practice...a buddhist monk, who...forget the laymen, they read as
much buddhist literature as christian americans read...christian commentaries.
Really, they will never go beyond a few basic works. Nor will [unclear]

[student, Kylie: Present company excluded right?]

Yeah. But monks will rely on the monastic textbook presentation of the five
great books which represent the four great schools which explain the whole [b:
Kangyur]. So they'll just

[student, Kylie: Which we're gonna use right?]

They'll just work, they'll concentrate their whole life on those five books.

[student, John Stilwell: That's still not all the [b: Tengyur] and [b: Kangyur] is
it?]

Not at all. It's five works out of the, out of the four and a half thousand. But
they will memorize those five, they will learn them from top to bottom and once
you know those you can read anything in the [b: Kangyur] and [b: Tengyur].
That's the point.

[student, Kylie: It's the Rosetta Stone of the [b: Tengyur] and [b: Kangyur]?]

And that's exactly what you're gonna study in these five years, that's the whole
point. I'm just simplifying it.

[student: [unclear] realization?]

Yeah yeah yeah now you're recognize realization right? {Tokpa}.

[student: And {kay} is {suddha}? {Sudday} [unclear] ]

Yeah {dupa} means "{suddha...suddha}", it's the {dup, dup} in {dundun}. It's the
{suddha} in {siddharta}, okay? {Drupay, drupa} means "practitioner, master
practitioner, realized practitioner". Sage? You wanna call...I don't know. {Wang
chuk}...{wang chuk} is I think Indra...and it means "someone who has total
control over something" okay? {Drupay wangchuk} means like a lord of
practice, okay? I mean a really, really master practitioner, okay?        A god of
practice. He, by then, {topa}.

[student, Kylie: {Wangchuk} means "Indra"?]

Yeah, I believe so. Or is Ishvara maybe. Actually it's Ishvara.

[student, John Stilwell: He is by then?]

Ah yeah. {Wangchuk} is Ishvara. So what it means is this

[student, Kylie: By then realized?]

It, it has to work. It has to work, if you practice it, it has to work.

[student, Kylie: It produced realized beings.]

Yeah, this teachings, in the minds of those people who were able to, okay, give it
a good shot, it works. It produces realizations in you.

[student, John Stilwell: Could you read that [unclear]?]

It is realized by master practitioners...then what he actually says in here is,
"When master practitioners have gone to class and learned about it, and have
gone home and contemplated it, and then have meditated upon what they
concluded by their contemplations, they, in their mind, these realizations occur."
It has to be the kind of teaching that if you hear it in the class, and then you go
home and think about it carefully, and then you get some conclusion like, "Okay
yeah, renunciation is correct, I think I better try to get it." And then you actually
meditate on it...you get it, and it helps you, it liberates you. And that, that, that
in itself eliminates a lot of teachings going around. I mean you can do it for a
thousand years and no {topa} will come...just nothing will ever happen, and
you've, you've experienced that. It's like a car with no ignition, you know, it
looks like a Dharma teaching but when you try it nothing happens. And it's
happened to you, you've tried things like that...I, I did. If, if you meditate on
renunciation with a sincere effort for you know three, four weeks, something
should happen, your viewpoint should start to change, and in a way that, that
makes you more peaceful actually, it will. You will be less vulnerable to the, to
the ups and downs at work for example, you know [laughs]...you know when
they think you're this and the next day they've moved your desk over there and
you know, you come back they give you an award and the next day the boss
yells at you and you know you make confused. You'll, you'll become more able
to...those things will occur, they will still occur, your state of mind will become
different. If you have renunciation. Okay, what time is it? We have to take a
break.

[student: Like quarter to nine.]

[student: Five to nine.]

Let's start at nine, I have three small things to give you and then we'll, we'll be
done. I don't want you to do your homework without [cut?]

[student: [unclear] ]

That's half. Okay three, three qualities of a real teaching...of something that's
worth practicing, okay? If it doesn't have those three forget it, don't waste your
time, you don't have much time you're gonna die. [laughs]

[student, John Stilwell: This class ends at what time?]

Yeah, {drupay wong, tchu kyi, topa} it should have been...those thing...that
teaching should have been internalized or realized by the lord practitioners,
meaning the, the, the great practitioners of the time, of all time.

[student, John Stilwell: That the great practitioners should have practiced it and it
worked for them.]

Yeah yeah yeah. It should have brought some kind of

[student, Kylie: Or that it had produced great lords, I would think.]

No, that's not what the texts says.

[student: It's all in the book. In english.]

Yeah it's in english...it's coming, it's in your reading this

[student, Kylie: So they, they, they practice it because they were great lords and
they could see the difference or it produced great lords out of them by practicing
it?]

The grammar says, "Great lords have realized it." It, it probably [unclear]

[student, Kylie: [loud unclear] Well they, they, they then that means they were
great lords before then right?]

It probably also implies that realizing it also made them great lords but that's not
the grammar of the books. Obviously, okay [cut]

[student: Which line?]

It's the fourth line, on page nineteen, which is the next to last page in your, in
your notebook. The, the commentary runs seventy pages and I'm not handing it
all out, 'cause it overworks my laser printer, and I'm...I was waiting for people to
drop out, and then I wouldn't have to [laughter] I wouldn't have to print the
whole thing like thirty-five.

[student, John Stilwell: What happened to that strategy?]

[student: He's working on it.]

People told me they're gettin' tired but just bust your ass okay? It's six weeks,
you'll survive, I'm surviving...I'm doing seven classes a week you [unclear]

[student: [unclear] ]

Yeah you're about, you're about a third of the way through...come on, I mean
[laughter] no really, just, just suck it in, you know? Just, just be exhausted for,
for six weeks, that's alright. And then, then you got a...then you will have about
a month and a half off...I'm going to India, I'm going to Russia. And then we'll
start

[student, Kylie: So in other words when we get tired we should buy you tickets
is that it?]

No I mean is go ahead and get exhausted, you got, you got six weeks to recover.
Then it'll be winter time and you'll be fresh. [unclear] holiday week.

[student, John Stilwell: When does the next series start?]
Around...the next series will start around mid-October.

[students: [unclear] ]

[student, Kylie: We'll be gone the very first week in October, yeah.]

In {Moba desh}? {Moba deshi}?

[student, Vilma Staiano: That doesn't sound like a great place to ]

Just kidding, just kidding. Okay, I gotta rush because I have a lady who's gonna
walk out on me. Please say {su nay}[repeat], {longden}[repeat], {du nyer wa}
[repeat], {nyembo nu}[repeat], one more time {su nay}[repeat], {longden}
[repeat], {du nyer wa}[repeat], {nyembo nu}[repeat]. This is from a commentary
by Aryadeva, who is after Nagarjuna the greatest...he, he, he was the great
teacher of emptiness, Madhyamika, right after Nagarjuna. Yeah. We don't
know a lot about these early lamas aside from their works, we don't know much
about their lives. I mean it was a...it was like seventeen hundred years ago,
seventeen centuries ago. But he's the great...he wrote a book called [b: The Four
Hundred Verses]

[student, Kylie: Is that where this is from?]

Yeah. He wrote a book called [b: Four Hundred Verses on, on Emptiness]...and
it's an incredible book. He, he, he was...he's recognized as a second great lama, a
second great scholar of the Madhyamika lineages, first is Nagarjuna.

[student, Kylie: Four Hundred Verses or Four Hundred Verses on Emptiness?]

Somethin' like that...[unclear]. And he...in these...in this line and a half, which is
chopped out of a verse, he defines the qualities of a good student. We already
had three qualities that you shouldn't have, right? Remember? What are they?

[student, Laura: Three pa, pa, pa, pot.]

Yeah, three {pakpa}s. Three [unclear].

[student, Kylie: Yeah don't smoke it, don't grow it, don't roll it.]
[laughter] Okay, that, that's a negative, okay, that's not...that's how not to listen
to Dharma. These are the qualities of a good student. So we've had the qualities
of a good teacher, we've had the qualities of a good teaching, and now we have
the qualities of a good student. {Tsor nay}, {tsor} comes from a word meaning
corner. That's a {tsor}. This, this...there's another {tsor}. {Nay} means "to stay", to
stay in the corner...but what it means is, "to keep a neutral position", you're not
holding...you're not biased, you don't have preconceptions, you're staying open
minded. You're open to...you're open minded, you're, you're not...you don't
have a preconception about what buddhism should be when you come into
buddhism class, you're not...I mean I get that sometimes, I come into...I start to
teach a class and a guy says, "No no that's not how...I imagine it's this, you
know?" And I, "Then well why'd you come, you know?" [laughs] [laughter]
Okay {tsor nay} means you're, you're...what's the word?

[student, Kylie: You're not painted yourself as you've not painted yourself into a
corner.]

Yeah, okay...in the monastery for example {tsor nay} means...there'll be a dispute
in the monastery, and they'll pick a few monks who are always know to be {tsor
nay}.

[student: Impartial?]

Impartial, that's good.

[student, Kylie: Mmmmm. So {tsor} means "corner" {nay} means?]

"To stay". Impartial. You don't come into the teaching with a lot of ideas that
you've ca...baggage, and you're gonna interpret it your way, okay? [laughs]

[student, Kylie: You're not your own teacher, right? ]

Something like that. Impartial, open minded, ready to listen to it, okay?
{Longden}. {Longden} means "intelligent". Okay? Intelligent.

[student: I know a woman named {Longden}, is it spelled that way?]

[unclear] It is a fact, to, to liberate yourself you have to be able to think well,
you, you have to be one of those one percent of humanity who can think clearly
and, and, on a, on a difficult question and come to a conclusion, and, and, and
live your life based on an intellectual conclusion that you make. It's very difficult.

[students: [unclear] ]

He became {longden}, I mean he became a genius.

[students: [unclear] ]

No, not...if you read the whole story it...[unclear] debater and a great Dalai
Lama. [laughs]

[student: I didn't hear that.]

Yeah. I mean basically you're gonna have to have an intellectual understanding
of emptiness...that's gonna have to prove to you why morality is correct to do,
and then despite your own instincts and despite the culture you grew up in, and
despite everything around you, you're gonna have to be moral out of
knowledge, and that takes an intelligent person, that takes...you're bucking the
whole trend of your culture. You're being moral...you, you are not ever gonna
lie because you know absolutely what causes suffering. Because things are
empty, you know...the whole thing is gonna rule your life. And that's an
intellectual understanding...at first it's coming right out of your intellect, right out
of your brain, you have no instincts to do that...your, your understanding of
philosophy is gonna have to rule your instincts, and, and then you can become
liberated...so it's hard. {Longden}. {Du nyer wa}, {du nyer wa} means "you
aspire towards high things, you want high things". Okay? {Du nyer wa} means
"aspire, or have higher, higher goals", like that.

[student, Kylie: It's not just aspiring, it's ex...excelling in your aspirations like.]

Aspiring towards some high spiritual goal, you do not...you're not satisfied with
a house, a car...you're, you, you've got your...and you're willing to put out the
effort....it applies there also. It's gonna be some pain, it's gonna take some late
nights, it's particularly when you're practice...when you're trying to develop a
new...attitude, like renunciation as we were talking about upstairs, there's a lot of
rough moments. You know? There's times when you're not quite ready yet,
and you're trying to do it and you have...delicious failures [laughs] you know
what I mean? You think you're doing pretty good and then you really screw up,
and you get big disappointments and you get big set backs...it takes ten years
sometimes to change one of your attitudes...and...it's very hard and you need to
{nyer wa}, you gotta put out the effort, you gotta have the guts to keep going.
{Nyembo} means "to hear", "to hear the Dharma".

[student, Kylie: To hear...the Dharma's implied or does {nyembo} means to hear
Dharma?]

Yeah no, just hearing which always means to hear the Dharma. In buddhism.
{Shu ti} in sanskrit. And {nu}...{nu} means "proper vessel". A proper vessel...this
person is worthy to study Dharma. He's impartial, he comes in with an open
mind. He's intelligent enough to understand what's being said and to let his
intelligence, let his intellect, let his understanding rule his behavior. And then he
has {du nyer wa}, he can...he can keep going even when it gets rough, he, he has
that aspiration to some high goal, and he not gonna get dis...he'll get discouraged
but he's not gonna give up. He'll keep going, and that's {du nyer wa}. Those are
three qualities that a student needs.

[student, Kylie: Can you put that in one sentence now?]

It's in the book.

[student: That's the sentence in the [unclear] book.]

The...by the way the verb 'is' is understood as so often in sanskrit and tibetan. A
proper vessel for study is a person who is impartial, intelligent, and who strives.

[student, John Stilwell: So that's saying a proper vessel to hear the Dharma?]

Yeah. You're on to...

[student: Homework?]

Homework, yes [unclear] way through [unclear]. One, two, oh Kylie.

[prayer: dedication]

By the way, in the homework at the bottom says, memorize the title of the
book, and the first line.   That's...that's this page right here the one with the
skinny verses on it, the first tibetan page in your notebook. The first fully
tibetan page in your notebook.
[student, John Stilwell: We're supposed to memorize that page in tibetan?]

No no. This, this line, and this line...and I'm gonna give you the a...

[student: Transposition?]

[student, John Stilwell: Transliteration?]

Yeah now should I gonna make you memorize the sounds, yes.

[student: Not the, not the characters.]

No, not the characters. You guys are exempt from the characters. If, if it really
overloads you, you can memorize the english okay? If you, if you feel yourself
getting stressed out, you're gonna quit or something...don't, okay? Memorize
the english, I don't mind, it's in the book.

[student: The top line is the title?]

I'll...when I get done with the title I'll just stop. In fact I'm gonna shorten it for
you. That's the title...we'll, we'll go over the meaning next week and this is a
typical way for a tibetan student to, to learn. He'll memorize the line first, and
then you're very, very ripe to hear it explained.

[students: [unclear] ]

If you're gonna do the english...it's just [b:    The Three Principal Paths] by Je
Tsongkhapa. [laughter]

[student, Kylie: I thought we're gonna do it next week.]

And then the, the bold part on page thirty-eight...right in the middle of the page,
it's one short line.

[student: "I bow"]

[student: "I bow down to all the high and holy lamas"]

[student: The bold part on page thirty-eight [unclear] ]
Right, right.

[student: Which is the first line? Which is the first sentence?]

That is the opening line of this, of this work that Tsongkhapa has written called
[b: The Three Principal Paths]. It, it's a, it's a...very, very important line, the first
line.

[student, Kylie: Michael, Aryadeva's [b: Four Hundred Verses] is where the
three requirements of a good student are from?]

Right.

[student, Kylie: The previous three about the hmm, the teachings, where did
they come from?]

It's in Kyabje Pabongkha's commentary and I'm not sure where it's from.

[student, Kylie: Which...of, of this commentary? He...it's...that's just out of this
commentary?]

[unclear]

[students: [unclear] ]

You want me to say it in [unclear]? I'll say, I'll say the pronunciation just for this
part. It's a {jetsun pukyi gyalpo, tsongkhapa chindu, zeppay, lama gyi tsowa
namtsun}. And the next line says {jetsun lama namla chaktsel lo} alright?

[student: [unclear] ]

The, the syllabus tells you what to read, I think it's up to fifty-six?

[students: Fifty-nine...fifty-nine to ninety.]

[students: [unclear] ]

Um...let me check something.

[students: [unclear] ]
[silence, sort of]

Yeah you only have to a...yeah you only have to read up to page fifty-six, for
next class.

[students: [unclear] ]

I'm very happy.

[student: So am I.]

No-n-n-n-n. Okay. Thank you. No no I like that. Okay. I'm talking to...we still
have, we still got two to go. [unclear] yeah. Good night, sorry to keep you so
late, I, I...I don't know how I can make it shorter.

[student, John Stilwell: I'd like to say for my part I'm willing to put in extra time
now to get the relevant information so, I don't know how anybody else feels but
[unclear] ]

Well actually I'm gonna go as long as I like to anyway. [laughs]

[student: I, I'd appreciate that [unclear] mind pulled off a sort of extraneous
sections.]

Yeah yeah yeah, that's one thing that can make it stop on time and I'll check the
trouble first, yeah. In the monastery the lama just say 'shut up'. [laughs]
[laughter]

[student, Kylie: Can, can you use the...a different hole punch like maybe the one
the class bought? [unclear] ]

If you need your holes punched then come [cut]

[end of tape side two]
930721-1